Educating in London

This post was supposed to be ready almost 2 weeks ago. Why it hasn't been is quite simply due to all the other things that have been on the agenda. More about this in my upcoming post.

But regarding todays topic London, here's the outline.
I travelled to London on November 25th in order to be ready for the SCD1 training that started in the morning on the 26th. This Sitecore training session however was a bit special, since I was going to be the instructor for the first time.

In Sitecore we have quite a strict plan for people to become instructors. First of all you need to complete the course yourself 2 times, each with a score above 90%. After you complete this step, you must carry out your first training session under the supervision of a trained instructor. This aproach ensures that whenever Sitecore sends an instructor out to certify developers, that they are well equipped with knowledge, know the material they are presenting by heart, and can assist the students in the best possible way.

So this was basically the reason why I went to London, to become one of these Sitecore  instructors. I had already passed the SCD1 training twice with high scores (one with 92% and one with 100%), so all which was missing from my puzzle, was to run the course under the supervision of Raul, who besides being based out of the London office is also responsible for certifying Sitecore instructors.

Training, Day 1,
I welcomed the 7 participants for the first day of training. The group consisted of a good mix of developers located at excisting partners and customers like the FA. Well, with the exceptance of one, but more about that later.

The day went by fairly smooth, although it's a bit tough doing the training for the first time. With well over 200 slides, there is alot of ground to cover on top of the labs which the students have to complete. Raul gave me some nice pointers and some well put criticism during the day which helped me fine-tune my delivery of the content. Practise makes perfect as they say. As day 1 wrapped up, everybody in the 'class' seemed to be very much into the material I had presented. So far so good.

After leaving the office I went for a walk in the surrounding area. My hotel was only 2 blocks from Tower of London, so I walked across Tower Bridge an into the area below Butler's Wharf. Very nice area I have to say. I easily found a nice Italian restaurant that was able to cure my hunger. Great pizza! Instead of walking back the way I came, I followed the river up to the London Brigde and back to my hotel. Not the longest walk ever, but it had been quite an exhausting day.

Training day 2,
Second day of training starts of with a summary of the previous day, before going into the more advanced Sitecore stuff. It was about this time that one student made a point that he should probably not participate in the SCD2 training on the next day afterall, as he was actually appointed to be a sitecore administrator, and not really a developer. We covered the rest of the slides and labs and then I prepared them all for the exam, developers or not.

Exam time.
The exam consists of 40 multiple choice questions drawn from a big pool of questions. This approach ensures that students are not answering the same questions in the same order at any time, so cheating is nearly impossible. Instead students may use all the information they have available as well as the internet to find the answers they need. If all my efforts in delivering the material should pay off, now was the time.

All students passed, one even scoring a clean 100%. And the administrator, who figured out he wasnt really suited for developer training, well, he scored 88% (and had the lowest score of them all).

I was of course very pleased that my students all did so well, and also pleased to know that Raul certified me as a Sitecore Instructor with nice grades.

Bye bye London,
On my way out of town, after leaving the office, I had to jump a few trains in the London Underground. Finding the right way was easy, but as it was the end of the working day for everybody, the Tube was packed. It's crazy and like nothing I have experienced in Copenhagen. I had to squeeze myself and my luggage into an already packed train. But I guess this is everyday life for most people in London. Eventually I made it to Heathrow, which will probably for a long time rank lowest on my list of interesting airports.

Well back in Copenhagen, my cab driver drove me home using a completely different way than instructed. Quite annoying, but I was too tired to argue about the price. At least I was certified, and ready to get started on the upcoming tasks and reaching the goals I had set out for...